Erbium Scientific News

Category for scientific news of the Erbium group

Revealing the topological nature of the bond order wave in a strongly correlated quantum system

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In collaboration with our colleagues from ICFO in Barcelona, we theoretically investigate the topological properties of the bond order wave in the extended Fermi-Hubbard model. We find that in a finite sized system, a topological order in the bond order wave regime can be stabilized experimentally allowing for the preparation of topologically protected edge modes. We finally propose an experimental scheme for the implementation and detection of this particular quantum phase.

The arXiv link is here

Narrow inner-shell orbital transition

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For the first time, we experimentally observe the transition at 1299nm in atomic erbium. We demonstrate coherent control and perform a detailed study of the transition parameters. Among the large variety of different energy levels available in erbium, the transition at 1299nm is of particular interest due to the associated narrow linewidth. In our experiment, we were able to measure an excited state lifetime of 178(19)ms, which corresponds to a linewidth of 0.9(1)Hz. In particular, we demonstrated the ability to control the atomic population in a coherent manner. In addition, in collaboration with G. Hovhannesyan and M. Lepers from the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne, we present experimental results as well as theoretical calculations on the atomic polarizabilities for the involved atomic states, indicating opportunities for the realization of magic-wavelength or magic-polarizability conditions.

Our work has been published in Physical Review Research.

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